On Wed, 12 May 2004, Howard Brazee wrote: @> > @> Why bother? @> > @> > Yesterday I ate lunch. It looks like I'm going to have to eat it again @> > today, too. @> @> Because our world isn't a circle on a wheel. We are building a better @> world for the future. I dunno if you're living in the same world I am. Sorry to be a downer, but the future is that everyone will die and entropy will eventually succeed in dissociating every fundamental particle in the universe from every other fundamental particle. If you're looking only at the end result of the process, that's where we're headed. It's the process itself that's important[0], and that process has general circular tendencies even in our world. Given the choice of a) killing off an evil bad guy to save the world in the short term and letting my kids deal with the next one or b) dying horribly, I'm probably going to pick option A. Living is all about putting off the inevitable for as long as possible. Which isn't to say that Jordan is good writer. [0] This, in fact, is what I think of when Kragar's onion argument is described: wow, way to waste a good onion.